Their catalog is wonderful. I think that is why I wound up ordering a second program after we hated AS 1. We didn't like that one either. I still have one of their catalogs here and I do enjoy looking at it. I do like some of their book recommendations but I won't buy another one of their programs.

My dd is in 7th grade at ps this year. Most of the classes are fine but the language arts I'm unhappy with. The do no grammar work at all. They did have a quiz on the parts of speech definitions earlier this year but that's all they have done. Every single day they practice for the state mandated testing. My dd is getting pretty good at the BCRs (brief constructive response) and the ECRs (essay constructive response). For these they practice reading strategies and the teacher requires the kids to use a highlighter as they read. This really frustrates my dd. She has never had to read with a highlighter before. Mostly they use hand outs of short stories and poems from what I can tell. They haven't done any novels this year. There has been no literary analysis in class at all. I remember reading Julie of the Wolves and other novels like that in 7th grade. Do 7th graders no longer read novels for class? There is one book project per term which involves literary analysis but there is no instruction in class on how the kids are to do this. For example this term they picked a book from an approved list and found 10 pictures to go with it and wrote a paragraph about each. I thought my dd could have put more into it. Most of her paragraphs were around 3-4 sentences. The teacher gave everyone that turned the project in a 100 and didn't even read any of them. Dd brought it home the day she had turned it in. I realize the teacher has 120 students and can't possibly read every word of each assignment but she hasn't provided any constructive feedback on my dd's writing all year. I figured she'd at least do that for the quarter projects. They do vocab lists each week and fill out the exact same worksheet (definition, picture, and sentence). They read 15 min each night and write 1-2 sentences about what they read (called a book log). They practice for state testing. I'm not opposed to some practicing and I think dd is learning some good things from it but I think every day is way too much. I just checked dd's online grades for 2nd quarter and aside from the one project every single assignment is for vocab words, book log, or a BCR/ECR for test practice. Is this pretty typical for a middle school language arts class? I feel kind of out of it since this year is the first time any of my kids have gone to school. I'd like to afterschool for LA but dd is so tired at the end of the day. I had thought of getting something like Latin Road under the disguise that we'd use it for Latin but she'd be getting English grammar along with it. I do Latin with my younger dd and my older dd keeps saying she is interested in learning it too. We're going to go look at a couple of Christian schools here because this is one of many things we dislike about the school. I'm not sure if a Christian school would have less focus on the state testing or not. 2 of the schools also offer a part time option for homeschoolers which would be nice. I do love the bus the public school offers though.

I've already been buying for next fall. I'm not sure which of my kids will be homeschooling next fall either. I have a tendency to overbuy every year. After 8 years of this you'd think I'd have it figured out by now. Our homeschool convention is middle April and I usually buy stuff there. Last year I picked up MFW 1 for my twins. We still haven't gotten to it yet.

We did the classes almost 2 years ago. We're not quite debt free yet but we're close. The only thing we have left is my student loan which is pretty small. We would have paid that off too but dh insisted we get new windows last summer.

My 13 yo goes to public school and I can't tell if she likes it. She comes home almost everyday upset about some friend issue or some complaint about a class. I've offered to let her homeschool but then she says she likes school. I think she likes the social aspect of being at school. For the most part I think she's like to skip the academic part of it. We've considered private school for dd but she says she doesn't want to switch schools either.

I thought there was a vaccine for HPV. I have kind of mixed feelings about that one so I've not gotten it for any of my girls. If one is that concerned about HPV I would think a vaccine would be preferable to surgery. Neither of my boys are circed and that article doesn't make me regret not doing it. I figure if they want it done they can have it done themselves when they are older. I think they should make their own decision about their bodies.

You can get EI services until age 5 here but we lost them because we chose to use the school districts program instead. Ds had EI therapy today and will get one more on Tues before his bday and that's all we can get. Through the school district he'll get 2 therapy sessions a week instead of the 2-3 a month through EI which was a big factor for us. He does seem to do better when he has therapy. Almost all of his December sessions were cancelled because of bad weather and the holidays which may be part of the reason he's been doing so poorly lately. I asked his EI therapist if she thought we should pursue private therapy and she seems to think insurance would not cover it. We could probably afford to do some private therapy out of pocket but we couldn't afford 2 sessions a week like he'd get at the special ed preschool.

I think I'll order ds some Robeez for night and see if that works. He will not sleep alone and is always with me and I hate him sleeping in his shoes because he kicks with them. He usually sleeps poorly so I wind up taking him to the couch so dh can get some sleep. About half the time we wind up sharing the couch together. Ds had his hearing checked by an audiologist last summer so we don't think he has any hearing loss at this point. I did find a new pediatrician to try today and I'll be taking ds there on the 18th. I'll have to look into what insurance would pay for. I hadn't really thought about doing private therapy until recently. We had thought his delay was mild but it seems to be worse than we'd originally thought. The Pre-K I have such mixed feelings about. I don't normally send my kids to preschool but for ds I'm willing to try just about anything at this point. I have heard lots of wonderful things about the Pre-K teacher he will have so we are going to try it for a couple months. The downside to that is we have already lost our EI services to try the Pre-K so we can't go back to getting anything there.

My ds will be 3 next week and he seems to be losing the few verbal skills he had. He used to say one word when asked to pick between two choices. He is rarely doing that now and he will no longer point. He had a few signs too but he will not do those anymore either. Ds has been getting therapy through EI but that will transfer to the school district next week when he turns 3. We had his IEP meeting earlier this week and he qualified for Special Ed Pre-K at our local school (they were wanting to bus him to another school but a spot opened up luckily) with two half hour speech sessions per week. His teacher was at the meeting and also requested an OT eval (I had wanted this but she asked for it before I did) and a psych eval. They have 60 days to administer the tests to him. Ds has no diagnosis right now other than a speech delay. I'm wondering if there is more I should be doing while I'm waiting. Ds will start Pre-K on Jan 20th. He turns 3 right before the big semester break so we are waiting to start him after the break. He has major separation issues I think if we did the 2 days he could go before the break we'd be back to square one after the break. I cannot run to the store without him crying the whole time. He is rather attached to 10 yo big sis though and will calm down if she's around. I'm thinking about trying a new Pediatrician and see if they have any recommendations. My last one has given no advice at all even after I have mentioned ds's delays the last couple visits. I really feel helpless as to what to do to help him. He's been in speech for 7 months now and probably doing less than he was when he started. He's had some really wonderful people working with him too. They did mention during the IEP meeting that the loss of verbal skills happens with autistic children but they said it usually happens closer to a second birthday than a third. Ds is now developing all sorts of weird behaviors. He bites on the couch armrests all the time, he bites everything (he's been doing this awhile), he spits a lot, and lots of screaming. He is starting to freak out over his shoes being off him too. I have made him sleep without them the last couple nights and it was over an hour of tears both nights but he did sleep well once he got to sleep.

We haven't done anything to prevent babies in 12 years and I've been pregnant 4 times in that 12 years. Our "baby" will be 3 next week and I haven't gotten pregnant again so we may be done. I'll be 35 this summer so I still have a few fertile years left I hope. I'd love a couple more but only if it happens naturally.

Phonics Road would be way too much for a 3 year old in my opinion. After the 1st 4 weeks it involves writing, doing spelling lists, and marking words with the rules. I think it would be fine for your kindergartener. I haven't done anything beyond the first 4 weeks yet with my 6 year old son because he is really struggling with both blending and handwriting. I think he needs to have a better grasp on both before we do more with PR. For your 3 yo the WP program sounds fine. I used that one occasionally with my twins when they were younger and they both liked it. I found it a little too structured for me for that age but it has a lot of fun stuff.

I'm looking ahead to next year and we are planning to do Ancient History. That messes up our 4 year rotation but we should have done Ancient History this year. I decided to do American incase dd goes to school next year and she hasn't had a lot of American history and the public school does Ancient History for 6th so I didn't want her to have Ancients 2 years in a row. I think she is likely staying home at this point. Dd really wants to do Ancient History and wants to do something with Mythology next year. I really like MFW. We are doing Exp to 1850 and it's my favorite history program we've ever done. It's getting done although we are kind of behind to finish by the end of May but we started at the end of October. I like the look of CTG but I don't like that it uses Streams of Civilization. I had looked at it at a curriculum fair last year and thought it looked so dry and more advanced than SOTW 1. I'll also be adding my twins to the history sequence in the fall and they will be a young 2nd grade for fall. I think a lot of CTG will be over their heads. They are almost done with MFW K and I'm hoping to be through MFW 1 by fall. If they were my oldest at home I'd just do Adventures. I really like that they would have books more on their level if we did TOG. I really like a lot about TOG but it does sound like it would be a lot of prep on my part. I wish CTG used SOTW 1 because I was thinking of doing that with the younger kids and do CTG with any older kids at home. I don't know how much of a challenge that would be though. I don't see any books for CTG that deal with Mythology unless they are in the book basket. Mythology is dd's main reason for wanting to do Ancients so badly next year so I'd like to accommodate that.

We don't use the math. It does look light to me but it is K so they probably don't need much. I did get the cuisinaire rods and the recommended book and we do use that occasionally but I don't follow the math schedule at all (and we skip the weekly math page). We did the first few but they were just writing the number and drawing a corresponding number of items in the box. My son hates to draw and he can already count so I didn't see much point in making him do the sheets. At the end of MFW K the child will be reading pretty much all CVC words along with a few sight words. I forgot we do the 100s chart and calendar sheets but it takes less than 5 minutes a day. In the manual September focuses on colors, October on shapes, November is patterns, and Dec-May is more patterns.

We'll probably get to 1st grade around March. My plans right now are MFW 1st grade. We'll add in AAS 1 and Math. We still have a good ways to go with Rightstart B so we'll continue with that. For my ds that loves math he'll do another math program in addition to that- probably Singapore. The science in MFW 1st grade doesn't look too heavy so we'll probably continue with Elemental Science because my kids like it so much. I want to add Song School Latin sometime too but I might wait until 2nd grade on that one.

Reading Reflex is what finally clicked with my oldest. We used it when she was 7 and it is what really got her reading. We didn't finish the book but partway through reading finally clicked for her. It's been 6 years but I still remember storing all of the little letter cut outs in a bunch of different envelopes. They were ruined in one of our moves.

My twins have a summer birthday and are 2 month premature so they could go either way with their grade level. For Scouts we've called ds 1st grade but then ds was the only boy in his pack not reading yet. He has been frustrated by that but he's just getting the hang of reading and should be caught up with th other boys soon. He's also the smallest one in the entire den which makes me kind of wish we'd waited a year. For church I'm having them start the 1st grade class next fall right after they turn 7.

I just bought the kindle version and love it. I don't own the paper version although I have checked it out from the library. I have used the search feature several times on the kindle version. I thought I might wish I had a paper copy to thumb through but I really like the kindle version.

I just got one and I love it. So far I don't have too many books on their but I did buy The Well Trained Mind on kindle and I love the search feature on it. I'm glad I held off buying the paper version of the book.

My kids have used a lot of different stuff. My older 2 both did MUS for years and then TT for awhile. My 6 yo twins are doing RS and Singapore. Part of it is I couldn't stand the thought of doing MUS again plus RS looked like such an interesting program I wanted to try it. I have a hard time sticking with one thing for a long time. I also just discovered MFW last year. In the past I'd done both Sonlight and WP with my older girls. They had also done LLATL and Daily Grams that I don't use with my younger kids either. About the only thing all my kids have used is FIAR. I haven't done all of the books with any of them but every kid has rowed some books. I don't see changing that. Some of the FIAR books have become my kids favorite books.

My 6 yo son hit that roadblock this fall. We were both getting frustrated with reading lessons. I took a 2 month break (a little longer than I'd planned) and pulled out reading lessons a few days ago and he gets it now. I can tell he's going to get through CVC pretty quickly now that blending has clicked for him. We've played the last couple months with blend ladders and other games but didn't push the reading.

My dh sucks at giving gifts. For my birthday he did actually buy me a present this year. About 3 weeks before my birthday he handed me Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii in the Walmart bag. Sadly that is one of his best attempts. He did nothing for the previous birthday and totally forgot our 10 year anniversary. It's hard because I love gifts even if they are small. I buy for everyone including his extended family it doesn't seem like too much to ask that he get something for me on holidays. He actually has gone shopping this year which shocks me because usually he buys some kitchen item at Walmart on the 24th and hands it to me in the bag. The gift he got me though is a Snuggie. He gave it away because I was asking what I should get my mom and he suggested a Snuggie and I thought he was kidding and he said I wasn't going to like my gift. I got him a whole bunch of home brewing stuff I know he'll love. He's a great guy in every other way. He just sucks at gift buying. I'll probably go buy myself something after Christmas. My dad is sending me a Kindle so it's not like I won't have anything to open but I just wish dh would put a little effort into a gift. It doesn't have to be expensive.

I've been doing Intro to Science with my 6 yo twins and 4 yo dd. It's gone pretty well so far. I haven't seen any other levels to compare but my 4 yo loves Intro. I don't think she gets as much as the older kids but she loves doing Science. Everything has been stuff she can do so far. My twins are more K than 1st grade though so that factored in my decision to get Intro as well. They have a summer birthday and were premature and my ds is on the immature side I'm taking formal work slowly.

I would see if you can get speech services through Early Intervention. My ds started getting speech through EI at 28 months and it doesn't cost us anything. There are no income guidelines either. I thought most states had similar programs.

When is AAR supposed to be available?

I haven't done ECC but with Exp to 1850 we haven't used a ton of the book basket books. I have purchased the ones we have used though. Our library system is okay but I find it hard to get over there when they are open (they have drastically cut hours). The book basket list is part of what you are paying for with the manual. I think MFW Manuals are pretty expensive compared to other manuals and the book basket list is part of what makes it worth the money to me.